Gothic Bodies: The Politics of Pain in Romantic FictionAn intriguing scholarly investigation, not so much of the ways the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries articulated pain, but of the ways in which pain itself articulated the late eighteenth-century experience. Through analysis of novels, plays, and poems, the author explores the transition from sensibility as a sense of "selflessness" to Romanticism, which puts the self in the foreground as the mediating consciousness. His tightly focused discussion sets a starting point for further critical investigation of the subject. |
Contents
| 1 | |
2 Imagining Pain | 30 |
Politics and the Romantic Theatre | 59 |
Intermezzo | 92 |
4 The Epistemology of the Tortured Body | 94 |
5 Aesthetics and Anesthetics at the Revolution | 120 |
Conclusion | 146 |
Notes | 151 |
Works Cited | 165 |
Index | 175 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Alhadra ambivalence Ambrosio ancien régime anesthesia Ann Radcliffe argues aristocratic Beatrice Beccaria becomes bodily body in pain body politic Burke Burke's Byron Cartesian Cenci Chapter Coleridge Coleridge's consciousness depiction Descartes destroy discourses discussion disease drama effect Elaine Scarry Emily emotional Enquiry epistemological excess experience of pain Faliero fear feeling Fleetwood Foucault France French Revolution gibbet Godwin Gothic novel heart horror human imagined pain individual inflict Jacobin judicial Lewis's Marquis de Sade Mary Matthew Lewis mind moral move murder Mysteries of Udolpho novel numbness object one's Osorio Paine's pained body passions physical pain physical sentience physicians pity pleasure poem Poetry problem punishment Radcliffe Radcliffe's representation represented revolutionary Romantic fiction Sade Salisbury Plain Sardanapalus Scarry scene sense sensibility sensitive sentience sentient body sentimental Shelley Shelley's social spectacle of pain spectator stage suffering sympathetic sympathy terror theatrical tion torture truth tyranny Vagrant victim violence Whereas Whytt Wordsworth